In 1900 Wilhelm Liebknecht, who up to the time of his death was as influential as Bebel in the German Party, pointed out that those party members who disavowed Socialist principles in their _practical application_ were far more dangerous to the movement than those who made wholesale theoretical assaults on the Socialist philosophy, and that political alliances with capitalist parties were far worse than the repudiation of the teachings of Karl Marx. In his well-known pamphlet _No Compromise_ he showed that this fact had been recognized by the German Party from the beginning. I have shown the Socialists' actual position through their attitude towards progressive capitalism. An equally concrete method of dealing with Socialist actualities is to portray the various tendencies _within_ the movement. The Socialist position can never be clearly defined except by contrasting it with those policies that the movement has rejected or is in the process of rejecting to-day. Indeed, no Socialist policy can be viewed as at all settled or important unless it has proved itself "fit," by having survived struggles either with its rivals outside or with its opponents inside the movement. If we turn our attention to what is going on within the movement, we will at once be struck by a world-wide situation. "State Socialism" is not only becoming the policy of the leading capitalistic parties in many countries, but--in a modified form--it has also become the chief preoccupation of a large group among the Socialists. "Reformist" Socialists view most of the reforms of "State Socialism" as installments of Socialism, enacted by the capitalists in the hope of diverting attention from the rising Socialist movement. To Marx, on the contrary, the first "step" in Socialism was the conquest of complete political power by the Socialists. "The proletariat," he wrote in the Communist Manifesto "will use _its political supremacy_ to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the capitalists, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, _i.e. of the proletariat organized as the ruling class_." (My italics.) Here is the antithesis both of "reformist" Socialism within the movement and of "State Socialism" without. The working people are _not_ expected to gain more and more political power step by step and to use it as they go along. It is only _after_ gaining full political _supremacy_ by a revolution (peaceful or otherwise) that they are to socialize industry step by step. Marx and his successors do not advise the working people to concentrate their efforts on the centralization of the instruments of production in the hands of governments as they now are (capitalistic), but only _after_ they have become completely transformed into the tools of the working people "organized as the ruling class," to use Marx's expression.[93]